Up Front

By The Editors

Feb. 15, 2013

Charles Joseph Scarborough, known to almost everyone as “Joe,” is a man of many parts. Born in Georgia in 1963, educated at the University of Alabama and the University of Florida School of Law, Scarborough served in the United States Congress from 1995 to 2001 before going on to host his highly successful MSNBC talk show, “Morning Joe,” and to write two nonfiction books, including the best seller “The Last Best Hope: Restoring Conservatism and America’s Promise.” One of Scarborough’s biggest fans is Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who said of him: “Joe speaks his mind without fear or favor, because he puts his country before his party. . . . That independence is what makes Joe Scarborough such a valuable voice in American politics.”

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Joe ScarboroughCreditIllustration by Tina Berning

Scarborough brings that independence to his discussion of the complicated relationship of Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon, as recounted in Jeffrey Frank’s “Ike and Dick.” About Nixon, he wrote in an e-mail: “It’s obvious that the man who received more votes than any politician in American history always knew that he was a lowly lieutenant in the war hero’s eyes.” Scarborough went on to observe that the friction between the two men bears a striking similarity to the current strains between the Tea Party and the establishment Republicans. Nixon was a politician who played on resentment. Eisenhower, Scarborough said, “benefited from his vice president’s bruising campaign style but was also embarrassed by his populist tactics.”